In order to have a more precise understanding of the plan of "cultural-national autonomy," which amounts to a division of school affairs according to nationalities, it is useful to take concrete data on the national composition of students in Russian schools. With regard to the St. Petersburg educational district, such data were collected by a school census of January 18, 1911.

Here is data on the distribution of students in primary schools of the Ministry of Public Education according to the native language of students. The data relate to the entire St. Petersburg educational district, and in parentheses we provide figures for St. Petersburg. Under the name of "Russian language" bureaucrats constantly confuse Great Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian ("Little Russian," by official nomenclature). Total students – 265,660 (48,076).

Russian – 232,618 (44,223); Polish – 1,737 (780); Czech – 3 (2); Lithuanian – 84 (35); Latvian – 1,371 (113); Samogitian – 1 (0); French – 14 (13); Italian – 4 (4); Romanian – 2 (2); German – 2,408 (845); Swedish – 228 (217); Norwegian – 31 (0); Danish – 1 (1); Dutch – 1 (0); English – 8 (7); Armenian – 3 (3); Gypsy – 4 (0); Jewish – 1,196 (396); Georgian – 2 (1); Ossetian – 1 (0); Finnish – 10,750 (874); Karelian – 3,998 (2); Chudic – 247 (0); Estonian – 4,723 (536); Lapp – 9 (0); Zyrian – 6,008 (0); Samoyed – 5 (0); Tatar – 63 (13); Persian – 1 (1); Chinese – 1 (1); unknown – 138 (7).

Such are the comparatively accurate data. They show a tremendous national diversity of the population, – though they relate to one of the most Great Russian regions of Russia. At once the greatest national diversity of the large city of St. Petersburg is evident. This is – not a chance phenomenon, but a law of capitalism in all countries and in all corners of the world. Large cities, factory towns, mining and metallurgical settlements, railway towns, and in general trade and industrial settlements inevitably distinguish themselves by the greatest national diversity of population, and precisely this kind of settlement grows fastest of all, constantly taking ever greater and greater portions of inhabitants from the remote countryside villages.

Try now to apply to this data of living life that dead utopia of nationalist philistines, which is called "cultural-national autonomy" or (in the translation of the Bundists) "removal from the jurisdiction of the state" of questions of national culture, i.e., first and foremost of school affairs.

School affairs are "removed from the jurisdiction of the state" and handed over into the hands of 23 (in relation to St. Petersburg) "national unions," each developing "its own" "national culture"!!

It is even ridiculous to waste words in proving the absurdity and reactionary character of such a "national program."

It is as clear as day that the preaching of such a plan in fact means the carrying out or support of the ideas of bourgeois nationalism, chauvinism, and clericalism. The interests of democracy in general, and the interests of the working class in particular, demand precisely the opposite: one must strive for the fusion of children of all nationalities in unified schools of a given locality; one must ensure that workers of all nationalities jointly carry out that proletarian policy in school affairs, which was so well expressed by Samoylov, deputy of the Vladimir workers, on behalf of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' fraction of the State Duma{90}. Against any division whatever of school affairs according to nationalities we must take the most decisive stand.

We should not be concerned with dividing nations one way or another in school affairs, but on the contrary – with creating the basic democratic conditions for the peaceful coexistence of nations on the basis of equal rights. It is not "national culture" that we should hoist on high, but rather expose the clerical and bourgeois character of this slogan in the name of the international (world) culture of the worldwide workers' movement.

But is it possible, they will ask us, to ensure on the basis of equal rights the interests of one Georgian child among 48,076 schoolchildren of St. Petersburg? We will answer this: to create a special Georgian school in St. Petersburg on the basis of Georgian "national culture" – is impossible, and the preaching of such a plan is the spreading of harmful ideas among the popular masses.

But we will not defend anything harmful and demand nothing impossible, requiring for this child a free state premises for lectures on the Georgian language, Georgian history, etc., the translation of Georgian books from the central library for him, the payment by the state of part of the expenses for compensating the Georgian teacher, etc. Under genuine democracy, with the complete expulsion of bureaucratism and "Peredonovism"{91} from the school, this is entirely achievable. And genuine democracy cannot be achieved otherwise than on condition of the fusion of workers of all nationalities.

To preach separate national schools for each "national culture" – is reactionary. But under conditions of genuine democracy one can entirely ensure the interests of teaching in the native language, native history, etc., without the division of schools according to nationalities. And complete local self-government means the impossibility of forcing anything by violence – for example – upon 713 Karelian children of the Kemsky district (where there are only 514 Russian children) or 681 Zyrian children of the Pechora district (153 Russian), or 267 Latvians of the Novgorod district (more than 7,000 Russian) and so forth, and so forth.

The preaching of the unrealizable cultural-national autonomy is an absurdity, which only fragments workers ideologically already now. The preaching of the fusion of workers of all nationalities facilitates the success of proletarian class solidarity, capable of guaranteeing equal rights and the most peaceful coexistence of all nationalities.

*Proletarskaya Pravda* No. 7, December 14, 1913

Printed according to the text of the newspaper *Proletarskaya Pravda*